win is thrilling to watch, because she's dangerous, a dark, albeit brilliant force that could just as easily fill a stadium as a stage WIth her powerful presence, quick turns, high kicks, scissor splits, and deep contralto. You might remember Goodwin from the 2002 Oscar-winning film "Chicago," which this show owes a lot to. She played one of the "merry murderesses" on a Jazz Age death row made even harder and spookier by Catherine Zeta- Jones and Renée Zellweger. Good- win, convicted of killing her husband, declared her innocence and danced her passion; she had a retro look and a dramatic strength that blew her co- murderesses away. (Watching Goodwin in the film and now here, I thought it might be interesting to see her in a non- dancing, yet still physically demanding role-Charlotte Corday, perhaps, in "MaratiSade"-to get a better sense of her range.) I'm assuming that Harvey Weinstein, who is one of the producers behind "Never Gonna Dance," and who also produced "Chicago," had a hand in casting her. Weinstein knows a star when he sees one. Based on the classic 1936 musical "Swing Time," starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, "Never Gonna Dance" is as much an homage to the film as it is a comment on the era that it grew out oE (The title of the current show is among those which the producers of the fùm rejected before settling on "Swing Time.") As in the film, Lucky Garnett (Noah Racey) is a dancer who's on the verge of marrying up. He's a vaudevil- lian oilly half in love with his intended, the snooty and precious small-town heiress Margaret Chalfont (Deborah Leamy). Show business has Lucky by the wedding tails, but Margaret's Re- publican father disdains his profession and will condone the marriage oilly if Lucky can raise twenty-five thousand dollars not by dancing. Tap dancing, Mr. Chalfont implies, is not a grownup activitJ The buck-and-wing? Lower you cannot get. No sooner is Lucky in the train sta- tion, headed for New York in search of loot and good fortune, than he's pulled back into movement as his dancer's ears pick up on the rhythms that surround him: newspapers being stacked, coffee being hawked, passengers scurrying across marble floors. The choreographer, Jerry Mitchell, and the director, Michael GreiL handle this and the rest of the show with great sophistication and ef- fervescence, which is exactly what the material requires. By having Lucky dance against his will-the boy can't help it-Mitchell and Greif flip the show's relative realism right over into surrealism and cham- pagne, tickling our minds and our noses. The plot becomes sillier, and we believe it. In Depression-bleak Manhattan, the panhandlers are cute and no one lacks for taxi fare. On his first day in Gotham, Lucky meets the dance instructor Penny Carroll (Nancy Lemenager) when she's given his lucky quarter in change and he wants it back. In short order, the duo is snagged by a producer to dance on a radio show devoted to discovering ama- teurs. So are Velma and Spud. A rivalry ensues. Velma and Spud are not ama- teurs. Neither are Lucky and Penn)!. Unfortunately, Lemenager is one, and Goodwin inadvertently shows up her deficiencies. Penny is coy and cute, a living doll with strawberry-blond sau- sage curls, and her innocence-she's a holdout for true love-recalls corn- flowers and white picket fences. She's a dream date, an idealized wife figure who makes Lucky's heartstrings go zing and his legs wobble. Lemenager's Penny isn't really a character, and though Leme- nager works like a Trojan to make us feel something about her, Penny's inner conflicts barely cause a ripple. Leme- nager fully registers oilly when she's in Racey's arms. When she dances with him, you can see how tough and persist- ent a performer she is, and how she'll grow into the underwritten part. But there's no bass or gravitas underlying her thin soprano. Like most symbols of goodness, she's a little bit of a drag- hollow and Pepsodent white. But at least she's honest. Oilly Penny can say who she is outright; the others dissemble, lest the fantastical social order, which has been based on lies and mistaken identity; be upset. ("The Im- portance of Being Earnest" is the mod- ern model for all such plots.) It's a farce-' s You Like It" dressed up in Ruby Keeler shorts and finger waves. And, like most farces, "Never Gonna Dance" is about nothing being what it's supposed to be; in the end, all missed I p * & ,_ .. ,0'1: The perfect fi:Tst course. :- Mi" t' ,; '" u Yo : "'1 , t 1 " A , " H ... >>: ..' 4 :' , ': ! " If ] .. ><3'i, ..' ... . . .. ... ..... ...... 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